God has forgiven you.

A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Easter

May 18, 2025 at Holy Communion

Matthew 6:7–15

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above” (James 1:17). In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. ☩ Amen.

I want to let you into a conversation I had this week about the Lord’s Prayer. In St Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus teaches the crowd the prayer to “Our Father,” he immediately gives a comment on its petition for forgiveness. The prayer says, “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors,” on which Jesus comments, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:12, 14–15).

My friends and I began speaking about the difficulties of forgiveness. One of them said, “But what if someone doesn’t feel sorry and apologize? How can you forgive if someone doesn’t ask for forgiveness?” He continued, “I know that when we acknowledge our sin and ask for God’s forgiveness, he forgives us, but what if other people never do that when they have wronged us?”

It’s a good question, because it represents how we usually think about forgiveness. But the way we usually think about forgiveness is entirely backward.

From early childhood, we are taught to live in a system of forgiveness that looks something like this— Young Jack hits Young Jill. We place an obligation on Jack to apologize, hopefully from the heart, to Jill. But then the obligation shifts to Jill to accept the apology and move on. Maybe we ask them to hug it out, maybe not. We teach children that asking forgiveness is an obligation, and that forgiveness is the reward of making a heartfelt apology.

This is the background that illuminates my friend’s comment. Having been taught this way, we have difficulty imagining a forgiveness which isn’t a response to the contrition of the person who has wronged us. And we apply this pattern to God: we think that God is up there, abiding alone in the heavens, holding on to his anger at our sin. But when we repent and ask for forgiveness, he is mollified and lets it go. Our repentance places God under a sacred obligation to forgive us, like the second child accepting the apology. Yes, God has a forgiving character, but that just means he is receptive to our requests for forgiveness. He still waits to be asked.

I say that this way of think is backwards because God’s forgiveness always precedes our repentance. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

But once again, speaking about it on human terms will be helpful. Tragically, many people prevent themselves from ever healing when they have been wronged, because they are waiting for the person to hurt them to apologize, or at least to show some indication that they have had a change of heart or learned or grown. But in most circumstances of adult life, serious offences will never be apologized for. The character of people who have wronged you may change, but character change is a slow process over years, and you need healing before that change in other people is complete. You can’t hold yourself up.

So forgiveness has to be unilateral. Forgiveness your decision to let the matter go. Forgiveness is a decision not to hold the offence against your persecutor. You refuse to make your heart a haven for bitterness, so you let it go. Before that person ever comes to you with repentance, you have already extended forgiveness.

The apology is still helpful, though. Although you have forgiven, a relationship of mutual understanding will never be restored until there is recognition of what has happened between you. The forgiveness you have extended becomes a feature of your relationship, which means that there has to be some understanding that there was an offence which has been forgiven.

So it is with God. God has always already forgiven you and all the world. But you “receive forgiveness” when you turn to God with sorrow for your sin, not because God was holding out in anger, but because you can never receive the forgiveness God is already holding out to you unless you recognize that you have something to be forgiven for. Repentance toward God is about resuming a relationship with God after having done wrong. We struck God once, and he turned the other cheek, so we struck him again. He doesn’t hold it against us. But resuming friendship with God requires that we acknowledge what has happened.

That clause from the Lord’s Prayer now shines with a special significance, especially as it is reported in Matthew, where Jesus says, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). Our forgiveness is assumed. We have already forgiven our debtors—our forgiveness goes out to them before they make any motion toward us. We ask God to have the same attitude with us. That’s why those who don’t forgive can’t receive forgiveness. Unless you understand what it is to extend mercy to the unrepentant, you will not understand the mercy God shows toward you.

Perhaps we have never understood the gospel. The good news is not, “If you repent, God will forgive you.” That’s a contract. That’s an obligation placed on man. The good news is that “God has forgiven you.” It’s an announcement of God’s gift, not an offer to enter into an arrangement with God in which he mollifies his anger in exchange for your self-abasement.

Our repentance comes from joy in the abundance of God’s love toward us, and delight in the friendship with God which becomes possible as bring our whole selves to him, warts and all. As St Paul said, “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20). We accuse ourselves of even the smallest failures of love toward God so that we can know “what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:18–19).

What a message we have for the world! “God has forgiven you.” God has forgiven every offense, and will not rest until every sinner knows the joy of having all offenses forgiven which alienate them from their heavenly Father.